


Aphids

by okaystrudel



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, No Plot, Short Story, basil doing plantcare stuff and thinking about death, i cant think of any actual tags that apply, kind of a character study ig, not very shippy but i love them together, set before mari's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29630124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaystrudel/pseuds/okaystrudel
Summary: While killing aphids to save his wilting roses, Basil is reminded that he's stronger than he seems.
Relationships: Basil & Sunny (OMORI), Basil/Sunny (OMORI)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68





	Aphids

Basil watched the soap bubbles pop. It was less of a satisfying burst and more like they’d slowly lost the will to live, growing smaller and melting until they dripped off the leaves and out of existence. There was something mesmerizing about soapy water. It painted sweet translucent rainbows across the surfaces it touched, and if you blew on it, it could even fly. It was strange to Basil how something that appeared so beautiful and innocent to human eyes could become something so sinister to another.

“Are you watching the bugs die?” Sunny asked quietly. He was squatting with his arms around his knees, staring where Basil had been for some time now. Basil liked Sunny best because he always gave him room to speak and think. They’d been in the garden for over ten minutes now, but there wasn’t any rush to do anything different. Sunny wanted to see what Basil would do if he waited for him to act first.

“Ah, yes,” Basil answered. He turned his gaze to Sunny. “They’re called aphids. I feel bad for them, I guess.”

Basil held a semi see through pink plastic spray bottle in both hands. His right hand felt sticky where soap had leaked through the nozzle onto his fingers. Today he’d had to use this as a homemade pesticide on his roses, which were wilting lately because of the aphids who’d taken up residence in them. It gave him a strange feeling-- guilty, but powerful. Basil often felt so small when he looked at the world around him. He had so little control over nature, and less over other people. It took moments like this to remind him how much responsibility laid in his deceivingly small hands.

There were things smaller than Basil. The aphids, the roses, and the mindless soap and water he held within those hands, all had less power than he did. Their futures depended on his mercy or his whims, and today he had decided for himself who would live and who would die. Basil let the bottle drop onto the floor and offered Sunny his sticky hand to hold, smiling when it was accepted without complaint. “Sunny, do you ever... feel like you’re playing god? Like when you look at something tiny? I don’t know, I’ve just been thinking it’s unfair how I can kill things just because they were born bugs and I wasn’t.”

“When I play god it’s in my head,” Sunny said simply. Basil kind of grasped what he meant. Sunny always came up with all kinds of stories, and drew what looked like whole other worlds on printer paper with crayons. Maybe there was power in that, although it wasn’t always something you could see. Creation was the gift of God himself, or so the story went. It struck Basil suddenly as so powerful that a single story had so much influence in their world.

He looked at Sunny with newly strengthened awe. Basil wondered who was stronger of the two of them.


End file.
